Gross to Eagles or Rams?

[Wither]

Is he really THAT good? He seems to love the team; doesn't seem like he would leave...

...but I guess I should've learned from Peppers...

[ACobra289]

Ok, I know this has been discussed to death, but I had to put my 2 cents in. If Gross really wants to be in Carolina and winning is important to him, he knows he HAS to get a deal done in time for us to franchise Peppers. Letting Pep walk without getting any compensation would certainly hurt the Panthers. If Gross cares about the team and winning he will get the deal done soon.

[panthers55]

Wo OK. I will remember to not talk about being buds, friends or supporters of the same team. Not sure your reaction was warrented, but enver mind...

Great logic but if I read things correctly the whole June 1st cut stuff simply can't be done due to the situation the CBA is in. It's also impossible to backload contracts now, so we can't extend any contracts past the 2009 season with an increase of over 60% of guarenteed money (could be way off there) from year to year. Thus backloading became a heck of a lot harder than before. Incidently those stats are right off the top of my head as I can't find the article I rea it all in. Will post a link when I find it again.

So essentially many of the moves you suggested are simply not going to happen. The reason I laughed was because you were short of restructuring Ma'ake for completing the cycle of players with over $1million ap hit. Unfortunately football is not that easy, especially when it comes to contracts on someones job.

Now go and chill out a touch, I was not mocking you, merely laughing at the whole situation.

Oh an incidnetly, whilst I imagine Gross will be earning roughly around $10 million a year, his cap hit most certainly will NOT be $10million a year. Your estimated $27million will likely be way off in it's estimation.

As you hinted your stats are off base. The CBA will affect free agents in 2009 but not to extent you suggest. You can sign a player and do what you want within certain guidelines. Even though there will be limitations to what you can do, it won't affect what I have in mind. For example you can still restructure contracts and extend players. You can still have roster bonuses and incentive clauses. Teams can still restructure contracts and extend players just like they did before. The only limitation to this is that they can't go beyond a 30% rule. In other words a salary in a capped year can't increase by more than 30% in an uncapped year excluding any signing bonus. So you can't backload a contract giving a player a contract of 4 million in 2008, 8 million in 2009 and 20 million in 2010, since it would be more than a 30% increase from 2009 to 2010.

So the reason that Gross's cap hit may be be closer to 10 million than it will be 4 or 5 is because of this rule. If he gets a contract for 6 years for 60 million for example it was typical to give a signing bonus of around 25 million and a small salary for 2009 and escalating in later years. But since we are going from a capped to an uncapped year we will have to spread it out more evenly across the contract.

So in my scenario the signing bonus would count roughly 4 million per year and his salary would have to likely start out at least 3- 4 million and could go up from there. I know the signing bonus is not part of the 30% rule and any guaranteed roster bonus is treated as part of a signing bonus. Unguaranteed roster bonuses are considered part of the base salary in the year it is received. So it is likely that he will count at least 7 or 8 million against the cap. We won't be able to defer a ton of his compensation as a roster bonus unless it is a guaranteed signing bonus.

I don't claim any great understanding of the cap as it is pretty complicated. But I do believe that the scenarios I used are within the rules as long as it fits within the 30% increase rule. Here is a good article that explains some of it.

And I do believe you are right that the June 1st cuts may not help us like in the past. But what I said still applies to everything else and the June 1st cuts are not that big of the possible savings.

http://www.askthecommish.com/salarycap/faq.asp